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Even
if he turns out to be the second worst president in US history, John F.
Kerry will still be better than our sitting president. At least many liberal
and progressive Americans are stating as much in order to justify their
support for the leading Democrat. However, such rationale does not dilute
the fact that most people in the world will not be able to sense any
tangible variation between either Bush or Kerry.
Just ask the Palestinians who, as the Washington Post reported, suffered 19
(other estimates range between 25-30) deaths in the last nine days (prior to
the May 19 attack by the Israeli military on a Palestinian demonstration in
Rafah that killed at least 10 people) due to hostile Israeli military
aggression in Rafah, a Palestinian refugee camp located in the Gaza Strip.
"Israel has every right to defend itself from terror," Bush proclaimed on
May 18 to members and supporters of the pro-Zionist lobbying force known as
AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) who are hunkered down in
Washington D.C. this week.
"The United States is strongly committed, and I am strongly committed, to
the security of Israel as a vibrant Jewish state," he said to the group's
4,500 loyalists. "Israel is a democracy and a friend and has every right to
defend itself from terror."
Democratic Senator John Kerry has been virtually silent regarding the rising
violence in the West Bank, where the United Nations Relief and Works Agency
has estimated over 1,100 Palestinians have been left homeless due to
Israel's latest military rampage. Coincidentally, both Kerry and Bush have
made no mention of the UN's tally in any of their recent speeches.
So if Kerry hasn't denounced Israeli policy, where does he stand? Well, as
he proclaimed in the Brown University Student's for Israel publication
earlier this year, "As the only true democracy in the Middle East, Israel
has both the burden and the glory of a vigorous public square. We as
Americans must be the truest and best kind of ally -- forthright enough to
say what we think -- and steadfast enough to stay the course in hard
passages as well as easy days -- the cause of Israel is the cause of
America," Kerry wrote.
Looks like Palestinians won't be seeing any real change in U.S. policy,
despite who wins next November.
And as many befuddled liberals fall in line behind Kerry, they are privately
asking; where's that darn Howard Dean when you need him? Sorry to say it
wouldn't have made a dime's worth of difference for the plight of
Palestinians, regardless if the old doctor were still in the hunt.
"If Israel has to defend itself by striking terrorists elsewhere, it's going
to have to do that," governor Dean told Judy Woodruff in a CNN interview in
2002. "Terrorism has no place in bringing peace in the Middle East --
nations have the right to defend themselves just as we defended ourselves by
going into Afghanistan to get rid of al Qaeda."
Sounds frighteningly familiar, doesn't it? Perhaps Bush watches CNN after
all.
Josh Frank is a writer living in New
York. He is the co-author of an upcoming book on the rise and fall of Howard
Dean to be out this summer, as well as author of the forthcoming book
Left Out: How Liberals Helped the Bush Administration, to be published
by Common Courage Press in December. He can be reached at
frank_joshua@hotmail.com.
Other Recent Articles by Josh Frank
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The Lost
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* To Support or
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* So Where’s
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Not a Chance!
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Dissent: Interview with Japanese Scholar and Activist Ichirou Tanaka
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Senator Max Baucus, Thanks!
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The Democrats and Saddam: Spiteful, Dazed and Confused
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Al Gore, Dean and the Greens Politicians as Usual
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and US: Goliath Endures his First Stone
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Drown the Dems
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The Silencing of “The Reagans”: Too Bad, It
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Dean’s White Following
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Howard Dean: Anti-Black and Law Breaking?
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Israel is Our Demise
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Dean's Corruption in the Green Mountain State
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Howard Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
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Candidate Dean: A True Regressive
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Dennis Kucinich: Democrat in the Fray
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Disrobing Dubya
Articles by Josh Frank and Sunil Sharma
*
Two Measures of American Desperation
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